Lawyer Against Law: Dershowitz tells Israelis pay no attention to international law

For years, Alan Dershowitz has obsessively been searching for legal avenues to condemn the Second Worst Regime Ever in Iran. In 2009, Dershowitz urged that international criminal charges be filed against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then the Iranian President, for incitement to genocide. Pretending to know what he was talking about, Dersh proclaimed that Ahmadinejad’s supposed remark about Israel being wiped off the map “is the equivalent of a military order given by a commander to his troops or by a mafia don to his soldiers. . . It is to be followed without question or dissent.” (Apparently he got Ahmadinejad confused with Chris Christie.)

Of course Ahmadinejad’s departure did not end Dershowitz’s crusade, as he recently urged that the same charges be brought against Iran’s current leadership, claiming its “statements and actions constitute a clear incitement to genocide, which is explicitly prohibited by international law and by the rules governing the International Criminal Court.”

Dershowitz also has proclaimed Israel’s right to attack Iran pursuant to international law based on a casus belli theory.

Iran would have no legal standing to protest a surgical attack on its nuclear facilities that are designing weapons that could be used to achieve Iran’s declared goal of wiping Israel off the map and killing millions of its citizens. The leaders of Iran have publicly declared that a nuclear exchange, killing millions of Jews and Muslims, would be acceptable to them because it would destroy Israel while only damaging Islam.

Dershowitz contends that “Israel has the right morally and legally to strike Iran just as it did on [the nuclear facility] in Iraq in 1981.” Dershowitz’s view of Israel’s legal right to attack Iraq was unaffected by the unanimous vote of the UN Security Council in Resolution 487 condemning the Israeli strike as a violation of the UN Charter.

Dershowitz has no expertise in the field of international law, but has nevertheless pontificated frequently on the subject, insisting that Israel has the legal right to conduct targeted assassinations of Palestinians (pp. 174-175 of The Case for Israel) and suggesting that there be a “cardinal principle that must govern all international prosecutions: namely, that the worst must be prosecuted first.” This presumably would allow every prosecution of the International Criminal Court to be foiled by the defense that some party somewhere in the world is more culpable. He has proposed that the international community implement a “continuum of civilianality” to judge how we feel about those who die at the hands of the Israeli military: really sad for a two-year-old, indifferent to someone who voted for Hamas or Hezbollah, and kinda good for someone who allowed his house to be a repository for rockets. Of course, all Israeli civilians presumably enjoy fully protected civilian status, regardless of how they vote or whether they are part-time military personnel subject to call-up orders.

Having seen his views on international law repeatedly spurned by actual international lawyers, Dershowitz has lost patience. He now asks, Who needs international law anyway? In a recent talk at the Institute of National Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, Dershowitz described international law as “a construct in the mind of a bunch of left wing academics. There is no basis for international law in any reality. It’s not based on legislation. Much of it is not based on treaty. It is the ultimate exercise in elitist nondemocracy.” Referring to a possible attack on Iran, Dershowitz said: “I urge the State of Israel not to base its decision on existing international law. . . International law in this regard is anachronistic. It is out of date. . .”

Dershowitz summed up all that is wrong with international law:

I cannot imagine any rational government making a decision on its own survival based on a bunch of academics sitting in the Sorbonne deciding in ivory towers what international law should be in a society of perfect beings as if men were angels and women were angels.

Dershowitz’s latest eureka moment is not new. In fact, it’s a carbon copy of John Bolton’s exclamations at a “Lawfare” conference a few years ago. Bolton drew huge ovations with remarks like “I believe in disproportionate force,” and “If other countries want to subordinate themselves to international law, be my guest.” According to Bolton, countries like the US and Israel need not say, “Mother, may I,” when exercising “full spectrum dominance,” that is, launching overwhelming military force against any country or target chosen by the country’s leadership. It makes bizarro-world sense that Bush’s US Ambassador to the UN would express such contempt for international law, but I haven’t seen Dersh himself abandon respect for the law altogether until now.

In some ways, Dershowitz’s new stance is more honest. The way international law has been warped to justify “preemptive attacks, targeted assassinations, the wall/barrier/fence in Palestinian territory, West Bank settlements, etc. has been obscene. Of course, one can hardly credit Alan Dershowitz with “honesty” without risking severe nausea. His motivation surely is not to level with the public. His problem is that all of his recommendations for international consensus – the worst first, the continuum of civilianality, the indictment for incitement: the casus belli justification for Israel to attack Iran– haven’t convinced the world to discard well-honed principles in favor of Dershowitz’s real cardinal principle of international law: Thou shalt not hold Israel accountable for anything. So he is just dropping the pretense and dispensing with international law altogether, and as an added bonus blames it on pointy-headed hard leftists and elitists in their ivory towers.

In addition to subscribing to an immoral might-makes-right world, Dersh is just plain wrong on the facts (shocker, I know). As Hostage points out, Amnesty International reported that 166 of the 193 UN member states have defined one or more crimes under international law (genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and torture) as crimes in their own domestic national laws. Almost that many (147) have provided for universal (i.e. extraterritorial) jurisdiction over one or more of these crimes in their national laws. Hostage: “So Dersh is simply wrong when he says that international law is not contained in legislation.”

One of Dersh’s high profile, megabucks fee-paying clients, Leona Helmsley, the “Queen of Mean,” reportedly told a housekeeper, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” At least that’s what the housekeeper reported at Leona’s tax evasion trial. Dershowitz’s version on behalf of Israel: “We don’t follow international law. Only the little countries have to comply.”

For an added bonus, here is the most recent Dershowitz laugher. The forward to his new autobiography says that he has been called “the winningest appellate criminal defense lawyer in history.” In a generally favorable review of the book in the Boston Globe, Alex Beam says that in his pre-publication copy of the book, “that quote has a message from the fact checker: ‘ALAN: I COULD NOT FIND A SOURCE FOR THIS. DO YOU REMEMBER WHO CALLED YOU THAT?’”

(Thanks to Hostage for a very informative email on Dershowitz, Bolton and international law)

37 Responses

One of the Dersh articles you cited from the L A times was filled with abundant Dershy logic like this: “Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.” So that 12 year old settler who went along with his friends to attack that Palestinian village was fair game. I’m sure Alan would agree.

This was my favorite part: “The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.”

Not only that, but this whole “continuum of civilianality” insanity is designed to measure only how badly we should feel about Israel’s civilian casualties. The presumption that Israel should be granted full immunity for all its actions is so ingrained that it need not be mentioned.

The bots decided that violence was the way forward. I presume they carried out a SWOT analysis and deemed the treasure in the territories as more attractive than a risk of a resurgence in global antisemitism. They should expect criticism and stop whining. But they can’t..

Thank you David and Hostage for your incredible intellect, your ability to cite truth from the “hip”, and your amazing memory of the true history– both past and present. I have learned so much from Hostage here @ MW.

David, that wasn’t Dershowitz’ first dip in the international law pool. He went that way before in 2003 at the annual vultures’ convention at Herzliya when he gave Israelis just about the same advice and tells them to pick and choose which international laws to respect. His actual words:

“…Israelis are obliged to follow the rule of law that exists in the democracy called Israel the way I am obliged to follow the rule of law in the democracy called the United States. International law is not democratic. You are not participants of international law, you are excluded from the United Nations Security Council, you are excluded from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which included Libya and Syria and other wonderful compliers with human rights. Your moral obligation to comply with the letter of the rule of international law is voluntary; it is a matter of choice and a matter of tactic, not a matter of moral obligation or democratic theory. You were not represented in the making of those laws; you are not represented in the implementing of those laws. International law stands on a different footing–it lives or dies by its credibility, it doesn’t live or die by the process of democracy, by which it has been constructed. Moreover, I am not suggesting that anybody or any country violate the rule of law, what I am suggesting is a dynamic view of the rule of law–change it!”

Walid, though that repulses me, it is clear that the dersh is just this (from wiki) ” As a criminal appellate lawyer, he has won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he has handled, and has represented a series of celebrity clients, including Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, and Jim Bakker.[3] His most notable cases include his role in 1984 in overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, and as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995.[4]”

he’s a glamour lawyer, not an international advocate/adherent of international law.

This is the part of wiki that ‘cracks me up':

“A political liberal,[5][6][7][8] he is the author of a number of books about politics and law, including Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case (1985), the basis of the 1990 film; Chutzpah (1991); Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case (1996); the best-selling The Case for Israel (2003); Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights (2004)[9] and The Case for Peace (2005).”

Yet, he’s been a veritable darling from all sides. And a big moneymaker with a big mouth.

Just, the guy is definitely repulsive, but he must be damn good to have handled all these “impossible cases”. His repulsiveness is surpassed only by that of another Zionist lawyer, Tzipi Livni that once quipped:

” I was the Minister of Justice. I am a lawyer… But I am against law – international law in particular. Law in general.”

The Jazeera article goes on to say more about her:

“… Given the imbalance of power between the occupied and the occupier, international law and concepts of justice are the last refuges for Palestinians. However, in that November 2007 meeting Livni made clear she values neither.

Livni, who is often perceived as more “moderate” than the current Israeli government, was by that time the preferred interlocutor for the Palestinians. But during the negotiations in the following months, Livni’s propositions clearly reflected her stated disregard for concepts of justice.

Population transfers

After the Annapolis talks, the question of whether Israel would emerge from the peace process as a “Jewish state” was left unanswered in the summit’s final joint statement. Thus it became a recurring theme in later negotiations, including this April 2008 session on “Borders”.

Livni: There are some Palestinian villages that are located on both sides of the 1967 line about which we need to have an answer, such as Beit Safafa, Barta’a, Baqa al-Sharqiyeh and Baqa al-Gharbiyyeh. There are also some settlements that were built behind 1967 line but expanded inside 1967 line illegally, such as Uranit settlement south of Hebron.”

Walid– Livni is one of the worst of the worst. Funnily enough, I expect more from women than I do men. I know that it might seem unfair, but I do. I expect that women have some semblance of maternal instinct and fairness and care for humanity. She is covered in the blood of innocents and hugely responsible for ‘Cast Lead’.

Shamefully, we have Livni, Albright, Meir, Rice x2, Power, Kirkpatrick as examples of the most terrible of the terrible. Hillary might well also be a member of that ‘elite’ club, and should not ascend to the Presidency.

True, Walid, thanks for finding that. But even then, while hinting that Israel need not comply with international law, he contradicts himself at the end by saying, “I am not suggesting that anybody or any country violate the rule of law.” Now he seems to have discarded that last caveat altogether.

David Samel @ “The way international law has been warped to justify “preemptive attacks” I think its even worse than that, Dershowitz is advocating preventive war which is distinct from preemptive war, the latter being a legal strike when an attack is imminent, what Dershowitz is advocating is a strike to forestall a shift in the balance of power and therefore illegal under International law.

Harry — just so. “I shot him (as of right) because I thought that he was thinking about hitting me.” No facts, just surmise. Not obliteration surmised, but merely to avoid being hit. Not immediate, just someday.

All people, I suppose, are occasionally washed in criminal impulses, but not every person gives in to such impulses and commits a crime. This “preventive” war doctrine seeks to legalize a crime (making unprovoked war; retaliation against no-act) against another who may never have thought of attacking you or, having thought of it, dismissed the thought.

amigo, as awful as he is, I think his remarks should be protected as free speech. However, a few years ago, Norman Finkelstein wrote an excellent analysis of Dershowitz’s prescription for collective punishment of Palestinians, entitled “Should Alan Dershowitz target himself for assassination?” link to counterpunch.org He argued that if Dersh’s defense of targeted assassinations were applied to his own analysis, he would be subject to targeted assassination. Dershowitz of course willfully misinterpreted this article and falsely claimed that “Norman Finkelstein wrote a screed suggesting that I be targeted ‘for assassination’ because of my views on Israel.” But the point is that Dershowitz himself has committed acts of verbal aggression (protected speech in my view) that would justify his own execution under his own perverse standards.

Zippy told the Palestinians in 08 that she was a lawyer who didn’t believe in law. There is a bigger point about jewish exceptionalism under international law. Humanity is facing a crisis on a scale most people cannot imagine in the form of runaway climate change. International cooperation is vital. And twisting the rules so Israel can remain unaccountable is not the way things will be done when TSHTF.

“Humanity is facing a crisis on a scale most people cannot imagine in the form of runaway climate change.”

Not according to the IPCC. They are slowly, quietly, backing away from the junk science they have been peddling, as they can no longer deny that the empirical data is falsifying the “runaway climate change” hypothesis.

RE: “The way international law has been warped to justify preemptive attacks, targeted assassinations, the wall/barrier/fence in Palestinian territory, West Bank settlements, etc. has been obscene.” ~ David Samel

[EXCERPT] . . . A few years ago (April 15, 2005, p. 34) the ‘Up Front’ weekend magazine of ‘The Jerusalem Post’ published an interview with an Israeli “expert in international law” who, tellingly, chose to remain anonymous.

This what s/he said:

International law is the language of the world and it’s more or less the yardstick by which we measure ourselves today. It’s the lingua franca of international organizations. So you have to play the game if you want to be a member of the world community. And the game works like this. As long as you claim you are working within international law and you come up with a reasonable argument as to why what you are doing is within the context of international law, you’re fine. That’s how it goes. This is a very cynical view of how the world works. So, even if you’re being inventive, or even if you’re being a bit radical, as long as you can explain it in that context, most countries will not say you’re a war criminal. . .

The Persian word for map, “nagsheh”, is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase “wipe out” ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran’s President threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, despite never having uttered the words “map”, “wipe out” or even “Israel”.

Joe, I’m no expert in Farsi, either, but I think it is quite clear that whatever words were uttered, there was no threat, even an implied one, to use the Iranian military to accomplish that goal. Ahmadinejad expressed his hope that the Jewish State would disappear the way apartheid and the Soviet Empire had disappeared, and that giving the vote to all residents of historic Palestine would quickly result in that transformation. It seems to me that the arguments over translation only involve how nasty the remarks were, but even under the most belligerent interpretation, there was no threat of military force. Dershowitz pretends that it had the force of an order from a military commander or mafia don.

By contrast, Israel has explicitly threatened to use its military against Iran too many times to count. That’s another reason international law doesn’t count. By what rule of law would Iranian leaders’ wish for the end of a Jewish State be punishable by preemptive or preventative attack, while Israel’s much more explicit threats would not?

Arab leaders agreed in 2002 that there was no chance Israel would be eliminated by military force. Hence, the Peace Plan. Iranian leaders are unlikely to think Israel can be “removed from the map” by military force. Ahmadinejad made clear Iran thinks natural causes will bring about the end of “Israel”.

If TheDersh holds that Israel can do no wrong — which seems to be the consensus belief here, mine too — and if he also believes that the USA can do no wrong (this is not claimed to represent his thought, but it probably does represent the thought of America’s torturers, assassinators, drone-operators, Bush-shrub, Cheney, and many others, and TheDersh has been heard to recommend torture, then * * *

* * * let’s assume a world in which both propositions are effectively true: neither the USA nor Israel can do any wrong.

In such a world (not far from the world we live in, where both the USA and Israel get a free pass as to international violence, immunity, impunity, whatever), * * *

* * * the USA can attack Israel with immunity and impunity and Israel can attack the USA with immunity and impunity.

In some ways, the present imbroglio over attacking Iran is a bit like Israel attacking the USA and USA attacking Israel.

I wonder how it will turn out.

seafoid, thinking as I so often do of Climate Change and on-rushing doom, tells us: “And twisting the rules so Israel can remain unaccountable is not the way things will be done when TSHTF.” (TSHTF means a moment when the on-rushing doom actually arrives, I suppose. But climate change doesn’t “arrive” — it simply increases. Think of the recent cold weather here and there, and the excessive heat in Australia, as points in a progress or process — on-going, but always ratcheting UP.

Anyway, it appears that the Congress of the USA (and maybe Obama as well, because he’s mighty quiet about it) regard Climate change as something they don’t need to act against urgently. They seem to think they have immunity from thinking, or America has immunity from the retribution of the climate system. Whatever we do, whatever USA does, is ipso facto “right”.

We have a Congress that has become mental cripples due to following the orders of the several bigs (BIG-BANKs, BIG-OIL, BIG-DEFENSE, BIG-ZION), and cannot recognize a true emergency when it presents itself in blazing clarity. Israel too.

Returning a bit to TOPIC: solving the I/P is not easy, but has been made enormously difficult by concentrating on “peace making” and ignoring “enforcing the international law of occupation” (which forbids settlements and wall). The idea that Israel is immune to international law has NEEDLESSLY created the last 46 years of misery and promises as many years more.

“…a construct in the mind of a bunch of left wing academics. There is no basis for international law in any reality. It’s not based on legislation. Much of it is not based on treaty. It is the ultimate exercise in elitist nondemocracy.”

This could have come straight from the mouth of Goring in the dock at Nuremburg.

“Iran would have no legal standing to protest a surgical attack on its nuclear facilities…”

This is rich. Dershy imagines that Iran will protest a military attack on their country with a legal brief presented in chambers. Bombing the Straights of Hormuz is a more likely response.

Dersh is a dirtbag and typical zionist.
They go around demanding this and that and threatening and declaring might makes right
BUT…the big dick they are always swinging around is not their’s but the US’s power.
Take away US support and international law and their bravado would overnight change to groveling and playing the helpless victim throwing themselves on the mercy of the world and international law and universal morality–exactly what they reject for everyone else.
There is no position people like this can ever occupy, either powerful or helpless, that they arent replusive in.

Can Dershowitz show that ” surgical strike” is mentioned in any international document? Can on the basis of the
nature of widespread effects of bombing , despite the claims of precise nature of the destruction of the selected target by this kind of intervention,he be accused of hiding a genocidal intent and be accused of lying,and be accused of giving an ethical,moral,and possibly legal cover to a destructive act? Can the certainty of chain of events that will unfold as is well known from the available understanding of the nature of the potential conflict be used against this man ?

Can Dershowitz be hauled before court for manufacturing hysteria and hatred against Iranian and be charged with trying to commit hate crime? He uses the language ,the way an Imam does in the cul de sac of Syria and Iraq to kill Jews and Christian mixing disconnected facts,arguments,motive,and history. How is this person different than the Washingtpn DC Imam An war Al Waki? Well the later at least was ready to die himself for his belief . Dershowitz wants American to die, but not for him even , but for his distant cousin in Israel.

BTW there are 6 million Jews outside Israel. Can Dershowitz explain how they will die from Iranian nukes on Israeli soil? Can Dershowitz explain how the the death of 60 million Iranin and survival of 100,000 Iranian ( diaspora Iranian) be understood as minimal damage to Iranian ? Or is he making the lies palatable and acceptable that an Israeli nuclear attack will not destroy Iranian and should not be categorized as genocide to influence the ongoing attempt in Congress and Senate to give unequivocal ongoing support to any sneak attack on Iran by Israel?

“The lawyers picked a brilliant, brilliant case to bring in front of Justice Sotomayor … What could be more sympathetic to anybody, whether you’re Catholic or not Catholic?” Dershowitz asked on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.

“Justice Sotomayor grew up basically in the shadow of that kind of teaching — and these are nuns, who say they can’t violate their own religious principles,” he said.

“There’s not a single Protestant on the Supreme Court,” said Dershowitz, referring to a court comprising six Roman Catholics and three Jews. “There are going to be a lot of people on that court who are sympathetic to religious views, and so it’s not easy to predict how the case will come out — but it’s an important case.”

So there you go. It is antisemitism if you connect the decision,action,and attempts to influence the media,court,justice department,government policies by the people with proven loyalties to
Israel and try to expose the ongoing anti American Israeli centric behaviors by the selected and elected few ,by the academician,by the celebrities,by the media owner,by the rabbi,by the dual citizens ,by the terror expert,by the Islamic expert and by the plain hanger on waiting for the AIPAC crumbs to be served to them.
These people just like Sotomyer grew in the same limited environment ,drank from same tainted bottle,saw same movie heard same story,listened to same radio,subscribed to same ardent emotional fact- free doctrine,and played and socialized among the similarly nurtured souls .These minds. Like Sotomyer learnt how to use the position of power and break the private space open to public space as continuous area of allowed activity,they silenced the “non -catholic “views with intimidation and law,with lies,with disallowing the other voices,with accusation of Heresy and creation of the new Heretic label – known as Antisemitic or unAmerican or traitor.
There are other voics in the Supreme Court that can slow down or stop Sotomyer or reverse. There is none out there to support American interest if and when a conflict arises between US and Israel. It is Israel that gets to decide what those thinkers should be deciding.

whoa, man, what an angry, hate-filled, histrionic drama queen The Dersh has become. It’s hard to watch him spew his intellectually-dishonest hasbara and think, wow, this guy was teaching students at Harvard Law School who are gonna be . . . American lawyers. Watching The Dersh do his gyrations of logic is almost a treat — he knows BDS has taken root and is in the global consciousness. . . he knows his position is indefensible. Maybe he even knows that the US military no longer has any interest in fighting Israel’s wars. Still, he’s left teaching to shill for Israel full-time. Good luck with that, Dershie. We’ll be following closely.

In 2007, I happened to note that Dersh was definitely making his job – defending the indefensible – when he suggested the parties to “give up rights, rights!” (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Nov. 11th, 2005), because he had to know very well who has rights under international law and who has nothing but their apologizers’ void speeches.
Moreover, I underlined that in one thing (only one) I agreed with Mr. Dershowitz, that he was quite right saying that the level of discourse about the problem had become “increasingly dumber.”
To date, his devotion in demonstrating the rightfulness of the latter remark is commendable.

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